Effect of Government Size on Environmental Pollution in Iran

Given the importance of the issue and the undeniable role of the environment in the community's life, in this research, it is attempted to test the hypothesis of the relationship between the government size and composition of government expenditure (Current and developmental) on carbon dioxide emissions in Iran during 1971-2016 based on autoregressive distributed lag approach. To better explain, the above hypothesis is based on two parts of production (production industries) and Consumable (household, commercial, general; and transportation) has been investigated. Long-run results show that despite the fact that government size does not affect carbon dioxide emissions; the current cost ratio and developmental spending ratio of government respectively have a direct (undesirable) and reverse (favorable) effect on carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, the developmental spending ratio of government in both production and consumable sectors has a reverse effect on the carbon dioxide emissions of these sectors. However, the current cost ratio of government in both sectors does not have a significant effect. Energy intensity has a direct effect on carbon dioxide emissions in general format, and although the energy intensity of the production sector has no significant effect on the carbon dioxide emission ratio in this section but in the consumable sector, energy intensity is associated with direct (undesirable) effects on carbon dioxide emissions.